The New Nation - Internet Edition

Staff Reporter

Bangladesh Oscar Committee has nominated Aha, a full-length feature film by Enamul Karim Nirjhar, for the 81st Academy Award 2008 (Oscar), world's most prestigious award, in Foreign Language Film category.

This was disclosed at a press briefing organised by Bangladesh Federation of Film Societies (BFFS) at Hotel Sheraton in the city on Thursday.

Habibur Rahman Khan, Chief of the Nomination Committee and Chairman of BFFS, Faridur Reza Sagar, Managing Director of Impress Telefilm Ltd, members of the Committee Azad Rahman, Prof Abdus Selim, Abu Musa Debu, Shawkat Jamil and Rokeya Prachi, among others, were present at the conference.

Habibur Rahman said, "We got few films for nomination because of technical requirements for the award. The major causes in this regard are absence of subtitles, quality printing and music."

The 128-minute film 'Aha' has been produced and sponsored by the Impress Telefilm Ltd and Banglalink, a mobile phone operator company.

Featuring the story of a family living in old Dhaka, Aha zooms in on the different issues which the city-dwellers face everyday, like unplanned urbanisation, generation gap and many more.

Saiful Islam Badal has done cinematography, while music Debjyoty Misra does arrangement. Tarreq Anam Khan, Ferdous, Sathi Yasmin, Fazlur Rahman Babu, Progga Laboni, Shahidul Alam Sachchu, Khaled Khan and Gazi Rakayet performed in various roles in the film.

The committee chose Aha out of two films. The other one was Shawkat Jamil's 'Ekjan sange chhilo.' Bangladesh nominated films like 'Matir moina' in 2003, 'Shaymal chhaya' in 2005, 'Nirantar' in 2006 and 'Swapnadanay' in 2007.